Our view: Bruin Voice controversy an overreaction at highest levels

It is not often that high school student newspapers delve into controversial subjects or write stories that reflect poorly on the school, staff or administration.

There are exceptions, and we in San Joaquin County are witnessing one now.

The staff of The Bruin Voice at Bear Creek High School in north Stockton, under the tutelage of English teacher Kathi Duffel, are fighting for publication of a story about a student who works in pornography.

When word somehow leaked out that the story was in the works red flags went up in the school district’s central office in Lodi. In early April, Duffel received a letter from Superintendent Cathy Nichols-Washer ordering her not to publish the story until it could be reviewed for possible obscene and defamatory content that is banned by the state education code.

Duffel, a Lodi Unified teacher for 30 years and adviser of The Bruin Voice since 1991, has faced off with the central office and school administrators before in defense of the work of her student editors and reporters. This time, however, she was threatened with dismissal if she failed to comply.

“This is a whole new level of district administrators who have lost their minds, quite frankly,” Duffel said in response, to which could be added that district administrators also are slow learners. Not once when challenged about a controversial Bruin Voice story has Duffel backed down. Not once has she lost one of these fights.

That’s not to say a student-written story about a fellow student working in the porn industry should not create angst among school officials. The words “porn” and “student” are not ones you hope to see in the same sentence in a student newspaper if you’re an administrator.

The fact that the subject of the story is 18 and technically an adult and that she agreed to the story, including the use of her name, is irrelevant to those in the central office. They say they are worried about defamation of the student’s parents and the invasion of privacy.

Administrative anguish about the nature of the story and district embarrassment also flavors the fight with Duffel. Unfortunately for administrators, the embarrassment genie escaped the bottle the instant it became known the district wanted to nip the story.

Stories about the story have gone viral. Publications from the San Francisco Chronicle to The Washington Post and beyond have carried staff written versions of the fight. This week, The Columbia Journalism Review carried an interview with Duffel.

And strangest of all: this all occurred in advance of publication of the actual story (as of this writing, publication was scheduled for May 3).

Both Duffel and student journalist Bailey Kirkeby, who wrote the story, repeatedly said the report has much less to do with pornography than with the struggles of the teenager and how she found her way into the industry.

“The primary focus of my story is on the hardships that Caitlin has experienced, such as failing her freshman year and having to leave her house, and how she managed to overcome those obstacles and create a successful, self-sustaining career for herself,” Kirkeby told CJR.

As a compromise, Duffel offered, and the district accepted, to let an independent attorney review the piece in advance of publication. Then, only days later, that attorney, Matthew Cate from San Francisco, decided to represent only Duffel and Kirkeby. That change, of course, eliminated the “independent” part of the deal the two had with district officials.

It is not unheard of for newspapers to have controversial or potentially libelous stories to be reviewed by an attorney prior to publication. Such reviews do not include the power for the attorney to spike the story. Legal guidance is sought only to advise editors about the possible risks of publication.

Prior restraint by government agencies and the courts is widely prohibited by the First Amendment and various court cases, but that right is not absolute as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously noted a century ago: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Holmes’ clear-and-present danger standard finds little support in The Bruin Voice debate. But while the state education code and prior restraint cases and practice clearly come down on the side of Duffel and her students, there are two other things to consider:

• A high school newspaper is not a private publication. It is supported by district funds. That the district would have a vested interest in content is understandable. There is, for example, a clear obligation to make sure a student publication does not incite a riot. That’s not a viable argument here.

• High school students are just that, students. They are not trained reporters and editors with years of experience. They have much to learn and, like all students, they will make mistakes as they learn. Bruin Voice students are lucky because Duffel holds a journalism degree and has been training student journalists for nearly three decades.

At end of the day, district officials created this controversy with an overreaction that turned a purely local story into a national student rights cause. Maybe the curse of that mistake this time will bless the central office with a lesson learned. Unfortunately, the administration’s previous battles with Duffel indicate the process of learning has been painfully slow.

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